The aim of the cooperative society Space and Living Labs - E2L is to develop the use of space technologies based on the tools of geospatial information, to serve rural territories, bringing in innovative solutions to create value and to improve existing practices.

The central idea of our LL focuses on the concept of regional living labs: E2L proposes a set of contexts (ways of expressing requirements for users, testing and demonstrations), to prove the usefulness of the applications of research and development activities in space technologies.

Our aim is to support the creation of new services by placing the end user in the position of being a co-developer on the scale of publicly managed territories.

E2L continues to develop the method initiated in the area of Pays Portes de Gascogne which has been the creation of a Pôle d’Expérimentation et d’Application des technologies spatiales – PATS (an experimentation cluster on the use of space technologies). This cluster functions as an instrument enabling the adaptation of structural changes of the local economy to help emerging a new dynamic and competitive knowledge economy , based on the ability to experiment, on the local/regional scale. It supports research and technological development projects, whose strong potential of recovery depends on the transferability of its results to companies. Simultaneously, it encourages companies to enroll in the dynamics of research activities.

Description

Mission, capabilities and qualities.

The GMES downstream services need direct contact with the potential users to measure how the future customers will receive their product or services

The above mentioned cluster has set goals of using these new technologies in the following areas:

- Changes in agricultural practices: Farmers rely on remote sensing, geo-information systems and satellite navigation to optimize agricultural practices, reducing inputs of nutrients and pesticides and ensure efficient use of land and the water.

- Management and control of water resources, diagnostic use of water by agriculture, irrigation, management of scales of the plot and the basin area, improving output quality, production and income, crisis management (e.g. drought).

- Land management planning, management of the relationship between agriculture and environment, measuring plots, geodesy and cadastral establishment, sustainable management of water resources, managing a rational planning…

These fields of experimentation are the dynamic part of the European program Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), which supports an appropriate use of space technologies.

References and Track Record

- Ongoing collaborations with the Regional Space Observatory - OSR, to test the pooling and to benefit from synergies within thenetworks and existing data

- E2L develops the « regional living labs » methods via the RITA network, an European inter-territorial network of living labs for the applications of satellite technologies(a project funded under the FP7 program, "Regions of Knowledge").

- E2L develops demonstration projects of services for public management of regions and agricultural practices in sustainable ways.